This invention relates to wireless telephones, and more particularly battery operated portable emergency telephones.
Wireless telephones, also named cellular telephones due to the system used for their operation, may be classified in three major categories; mobile, transportable, and portable. All these types of telephones contain a transmitter and a receiver, the combination of the two commonly being called a transceiver. Of course, in order to operate, they need a power source, which usually comes in the form of a rechargeable battery.
The mobile telephones are mostly installed in automobiles or other vehicles, and they are considerably more powerful than the rest, because they are powered by the battery of the vehicle, which for all practical purposes provides an unlimited power source as far as the needs of the mobile telephone are concerned. They are usually permanently installed in the vehicle, and they have antennas, which are mostly mounted outside the vehicle, but sometimes they may also be mounted inside. There is no doubt then that they fulfil their purpose of providing good communications from a vehicle to the outside world, but they cannot provide the same type of communications to a person away from the vehicle.
The transportable telephones have their own battery, which is rather powerful, and since they are not permanently installed in the vehicle, they may be used inside the vehicle in a similar manner as the mobile phones, or they may also be used outside the vehicle. Due to the rather high weight of the battery, however, which is in the vicinity of 4-6 pounds, they are mainly used as telephones which may be in more than one cars, or when not in use, they may be stored out of sight, in the trunk of the car, to decrease the probability of somebody attempting to break into the car for stealing the telephone.
The portable telephones use a much smaller rechargeable battery within the handset, and an antenna on the handset, thus resembling very much the handset of a common cordless telephone. They may be carried in the pocket of a person, but they are more expensive than the other two types since they have the most stringent power requirements, due to the small size of the battery.
The above types of wireless telephones are a small part of a very complicated cellular network, which combines an elaborate relay of towers, as well as interconnected wireless and regular phone lines. This renders the cellular service very expensive and often inadequate. The operation of cellular networks is very well known to the artisans.
Despite the apparent popularity of cellular phones, there is a large portion of population, who would like to have a less expensive and more powerful means of communications, just for emergency situations. Many people, indeed, buy the full service of a cellular carrier, and attempt to use it for emergency purposes only, in order to pay only the service fee, even though the service fee itself is very steep. Others, cannot afford it at all, with catastrophic results, because of lack of communications in an emergency situation, in a remote place, for example.
First of all, the emergency telephone should have to be light and portable, so that it could be carried by the owner in his or her pocket or purse without a problem. This type of telephone, however, happens to be the most expensive one. In addition to this, the small batteries of portable phones for regular and conventional use, may happen to go low and render the portable phone insufficient in power just the time the emergency may occur, and the phone is needed the most. One of the reasons that this is very probable is that the regular portable phones are usually maintained at a stand-by status, which consumes power of the battery. Furthermore, the owner of the phone, like a holder of a credit card, does not resist to use it, even for nonemergency situations. Even worse, the cellular phone owner pays as much for a call that he or she answers for air-time as for one he or she makes, while the caller, calling from a traditional telephone pays the nominal non-cellular charge; and all this is added to the monthly service charge, which is non-affordable to many people, as aforementioned.
Therefore, there is a strong need for an inexpensive system, affordable for a higher portion of the population, which system is also much more effective and efficient. Although a number of attempts have been made in the past to create communications systems for cases of emergency situations, none of them resolves the problems recognized and resolved by the instant invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,237,344 (Moore) discloses a system for rapid response communications system in order to provide reliable health care services for patients located within or outside a health care facility. Furthermore, an out-of-hospital communications network using auto-dialing telephones is provided to allow outpatients to communicate from outside the facility with the health care coordinator to assist the outpatients in rapidly and efficiently receiving appropriate advice and health care as indicated by the by the patient medical profile and for responding to emergency situations.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,686,697 (Shapiro et al.) discloses a telephone care system, which has a line-checking arrangement connected to a line seizing arrangement and an off-hook detector so as to activate the line seizing arrangement and send a bad line signal in the event that the off the hook detector does not provide an off-hook signal when the line has been seized. A preferred embodiment also utilizes the off-hook detector for the additional purpose of resetting an inactivity timer, which, on expiration of a predetermined interval of time, triggers an alarm call over the telephone wires.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,724,538 (Farrell) discloses a roadside emergency system, which includes a roadside station which has a telephone unit similar to a mobile telephone set for a cellular mobil telephone system. When the unit is activated, it automatically generates radio signals which cause a mobile telephone switching office to dial up an emergency station, such as a highway police station. The office also automatically establishes a channel for voice communication between the roadside station and the emergency station. The roadside station is further provided with a back-up battery and an alarm to prevent tampering.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,470 (Kobayashi et al) discloses a radio telephone apparatus including a base unit connected to a wire line and a radio telephone unit connected to the base unit via a radio communication link. The apparatus has an instantaneous conversation function for establishing a conversation state by detecting that the radio telephone unit has been lifted up in a standby state, and also has a talk commencing/terminating key allowing a command for commencing a conversation and a commend for terminating the conversation to be imputed alternately. A time guard controlling circuit is also provided for invalidating an input operation of the talk commencing/terminating key if the talk commencing/terminating key is operated during a period set time. Simultaneously as the conversation state is established by lifting the radio telephone unit in the standby state, the preset timer is started, and even if the talk commencing/terminating key is pressed during the preset time of the timer, the input operation is invalidated and the conversation state is maintained.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,473 (Freeland et al.) discloses a pager and a radio-telephone apparatus having a radio pager section and a cellular radiotelephone section into one unit. This apparatus may automatically receive a plurality of pages while the cellular radiotelephone section is on, communicating a cellular telephone call, or off and unattended. The received pages are stored in the pager section until the apparatus user acknowledges their receipt by a key-stroke. The pages are then transferred to the radiotelephone section and stored in a non-volatile memory for later use.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,159,317 (Brav) discloses a home communicator, which includes aid request circuitry capable of establishing communications with a central monitoring station in response to a first predetermined activation step performed by a subscriber and test circuitry capable of self-testing the home communicator in response to a second predetermined activation step formed by the subscriber. The home communicator further includes enable/disable circuitry capable of transmitting an identification number to a central monitoring station in response to a third predetermined activation step with the aid request circuitry and the test circuitry being unresponsive prior to the functioning of the enable/disable circuitry.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,180 (Chavous) discloses a device for responsively providing, in cooperative association with the 911 emergency system, the number and location of a telephone, especially a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) extension telephone, from which such a 911 call originates. A first device is installed between PBX's and the extensions thereof, with the number and location of each extension stored in the device's electronic memory. A second such device is installed at a Public Safety Answering Point (PASP). When 911 is dialed from an extension telephone of a PBX equipped with a device of Chavous' invention, even if the extension receiver is still on hook, the extension is connected over telephone lines to the second device installed at the PASP. The device at the PASP then interrogates the device at the PBX which responsively transmits the location of the extension telephone from which the call originated. The device installed at the PASP relays the location information to at least one computer which informs an operator of the location of the calling phone. The PASP operator is then able to dispatch assistance to the person placing the emergency call. Provision is made for automatically selecting an alternate route if no interrogating signal is detected.